Is it time for a rally against the new Arena Project – Editorial

Today the Conservative mess we call government announced the biggest ever single year deficit in Canadian history.

At the same time, Cornwall Ontario, a small city of just over 40,000 people with a tax base of less than 15,000 awarded a contract to a Whitby firm for $1, 367,500.00 to design a rink that hasn’t been funded yet.

Details haven’t been released but it seems boggling that the city would spend any monies until funding for the project is in place and so far; unless someone knows something; the funds have yet to be announced.

Today the group led by Scott Lecky kicked off their fund raising with a breakfast and announced $525,000 in pledges.

Kingston failed to raise the same $2 Million dollars that Mr. Lecky’s group is trying to raise. ( L I N K )

In this current financial climate, and in a small city like Cornwall loading this arena onto the public purse will hamper growth. It will hamper jobs, and could well push the city backwards.

I love hockey, but the people who want this arena have to write the cheques to pay for it and not just give out pledges; and frankly I don’t think the city should be writing cheques until there’s at least 10% of the cost to local taxpayers on the table and maybe not even then.

Cornwall needs jobs and those jobs are going to be hard to create with the high city taxes we have. We need money to attract business to Cornwall; to attract doctors to Cornwall; and to attract things that will help grow Cornwall.

We need dollars to help the people who are already here too and if the local tax base ends up paying for this project will there be any dollars for the things we truly need?

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1 Comment on "Is it time for a rally against the new Arena Project – Editorial"

Many people state that we need the money for the proposed arena to create jobs? I would like to see one person explain how that would happen. If I cut a cheque to the city of Cornwall for 30 Million dollars how would jobs then come to Cornwall? If this project proceeds this guy, itinerant, has it right. He posted on the Freeholder webpage article “$580K for new arena” Thursday, May 28, 2009 and I quote “The Si Miller has been condemned on the north side so why not all of it? BTMC has had roof issues since I played… Read more »